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November 8, 2006

Marriage Manifesto

My friend Troy is awesome. He is not only gay (sexual orientation) but queer (social identity) and after the four panelists had spoken in the Brokeback session at Sunstone (see the intro and the excerpt), I asked him to come up and make a comment, in part because he knew all four women on the panel, and in part because I knew he'd deliver both a queer-positive and a woman-positive message. He gets it: he understands the patriarchy is the basic problem, and claims that one reason he's such a decent, enlightened person is because he has listened to the women in his life. He also doesn't take the "oh, I'm gay and it's such a source of heartache" approach to homosexuality--he acknowledges that people go through that stage, but at some point, he says, embrace your gayness! Love yourself for who you are! Be positive about all the fabulous aspects of gayness, instead of trying to retain as many elements of straightness as you possibly can.

Troy does a radio show in Salt Lake called Now Queer This. He's working a documentary about some brouhaha in southern Utah over legislation to define a marriage as existing only between one man and one woman. He has filmed orthodox Mormons, gays, and polygamists as part of the movie.

Troy gets this as well: alternative marriage is alternative marriage, and so he supports the decriminalization of polygamy. Independent polygamists get it too: many support legalization of gay marriage between consenting adults because they realize that it will pave the way for decriminalization of polygamy among consenting adults. (Which many in the gay community find distressing.) My family, which is well stocked with Mormon Republican lawyers and judges who find both gay marriage and polygamy revolting (one is counter to god's will, and the other is entirely god's will, but not something anyone with any self esteem and a real love for her spouse would ever do if she could possibly avoid it), understand that point as well--and they're really afraid.

And all that is why, at dinner a couple of days after Sunstone ended, Troy and I began discussing how we rather hoped the issue of alternative marriage was forced in Utah, that some federal ruling made both gay marriage AND polygamy legal, not only because it would be legally consistent, but because it would be really, really fun to watch the brethren of the church squirm as they tried to decide what to do about the legacy of polygamy, this horrible embarrassment that is rejected by the church as a practice but embraced as a doctrine.

Unfortunately our position enraged Annabelle, a Mormon feminist who joined us for dinner. Annabelle is devoutly opposed to religious polygyny, as she calls the Mormon flavor of polygamy. She felt that the legalization of polygamy would ensure the repression of women.

Troy and I argued otherwise: make it legal! Shine the light of day on the whole sordid business, and make it less sordid. Insist that all plural marriages be recognized by the legal system, so that any marriage that appears to be coercive, or to involve someone who is underage, can be stopped, and the men in such cases prosecuted.

Which is a way of saying that I fully support the right of all consenting adults to marry whomever they want.

If a gay woman wants to marry a straight man and he wants to marry her, I support their legal right to do so.

If two straight men want to marry one straight woman and she wants to marry them both, I support their legal right to do so.

If two bi-sexual women want to each other, as well as two bi-sexual men who have also married each other, so that all four are married to each of the other three, I support their legal right to do so.

What I don't support--and I believe that both religious polygyny and the rhetoric of Ben Christensen (and very likely his actual marriage) are examples of this--is the invocation of religion, God's will and God's favor in support of marriages that privilege the desires and demands of men over those of women.

And since there's no way to legislate against that particular dimension, I'm left with discussing why I think such patriarchal marriages are back-asswards, foolish and destructive, even though I feel quite strongly that as long as they involve adults of relatively sound mind, they should be legal.

So, Ben et al, there you have it, just as you requested: I acknowledge your right to do as you want, and I support your legal right to marry whomever you want, to work out your sex life as you see fit, and to have as many children as your marriage can produce.

Now please acknowledge my right to find your choices in this regard every bit as foolish, naive, and pigheaded as those of someone who chooses to eat nothing but celery, lettuce, rice cakes, diet soda and laxatives, and is always defending her right to be anorexic.

Acknowledge as well my right to critique a piece published in a magazine I've subscribed to and published in for years, and to call attention to bad logic, poor writing and limited thinking when I see it.

Ben has already acknowledged that he was foolish not to imagine that there could be a feminist critique of his position--not that he acknowledged the validity of my critique, just that he should not have assumed no such critique would ever happen.

It ain't much, but considering the source, it's a start.

Posted by Holly at 10:25 AM | Comments (1)

July 22, 2006

Not the Star I Paid to See

Picking up where I left off yesterday on the matter of unpleasant parents:

Another good thing about the way Mormons deal with kids: everyone (well, almost everyone) learns very early that there are places where it's just not appropriate to bring children. This doesn't cause kids much pain or resentment, because a lot of those adult forums are plain boring, and kids are rightfully glad to escape them. You learn that your parents can go off and leave with you a babysitter and it won't kill you, the babysitter OR your parents--in fact, if the babysitter is cool enough, you might even have fun, and you usually get something special for dinner.

The last ward (a Mormon congregation) I attended was an young adult/student ward at the Institute at the U of Arizona. There were no kids in this ward, because you had to be a childless university student and/or single person over the age of 18 but under 35 to attend it. The idea was to help young people meet potential mates, though childless couples in which at least one spouse was enrolled as a student could also attend this ward.

But there was this divorced woman in her late 20s who insisted on bringing her five-year-old daughter with her, and largely because the bishop felt sorry for her, both mother and child were allowed to attend. The daughter went to all the meetings with her mother, including Relief Society, the meeting for women. Well. One Sunday I was teaching the lesson, and I made an off-hand comment about how there was no Santa Claus.

Well!

The child was upset to learn that there was no Santa Claus, and the mother was incensed that I let that secret slip, and wanted me reprimanded. However, the RS president dealt with the matter in what I consider the most appropriate way: she told the woman, "If you don't want your child to hear adult conversations, don't bring your child to adult forums."

I really resent parents who refuse to get babysitters, who insist on bringing their kids with them to ANY and EVERYTHING they want to do. Neither I nor my sister (who had four kids of her own, but she and my brother-in-law got a babysitter) will ever forget the 2002 midnight premier of The Two Towers, mostly because some young couple brought their three-year-old. He cried for a good long while, and the parents let him. He kept saying, "I'm tired! It's noisy here. I want to go home." And finally, since he couldn't go home, the poor boy did what he could to escape the noise: he went out in the hall and fell asleep on the floor--and the parents left him there. There is no way in which such profoundly selfish behavior constitutes acceptable parenting. In fact, it might even considered criminally negligent--what if someone had stolen the kid? It wouldn't have been hard. And although the greatest wrong was done to the child, I also felt sorry for everyone else in that theater: we should not have had to listen to him cry. The parents should not have brought him, and when he began to cry, they should have left the theater.

The theaters where I live now try to prevent such situations; there's a sign at the box office with the picture of a really cute baby. Underneath is a caption reading, "Cute as you are, you are not the star I paid to see." The sign explains that no child under six years of age will be admitted to any R-rated movie beginning after 6 p.m. (I always used to wonder who would bring a child under six to ANY R-rated movie, no matter what time it showed. Then I found out.)

Restrictions like that really infuriate one of my friends, who fairly burst with pride as she told me how she'd taken her six-month-old child to a showing of Brokeback Mountain. And I kept thinking, "Brokeback Mountain is a really great movie, but you're an ass." She spent all this time telling me how lonely and depressing it is to be around a kid all day without other adult company, and how hard it is to get people to accommodate her motherhood. And then she and her husband and child and I went to dinner, and a fair portion of the meal was spent retrieving the silverware the child constantly threw on the floor. I have 14 nieces and nephews; I understand that small children need to be entertained. But I also understand that entertaining children requires energy, and that if you want a certain kind of adult conversation, you don't involve a kid. And as I listened to my friend go on and on about how lonely she is, I thought, "Could part of the problem be that you alienate people who would be DELIGHTED to give you the adult conversation you claim to crave, if you were just willing to pay a babysitter?"

In other words, I accept that if I visit friends who have children, part of my time will be spent getting to know and interacting with their children--and in many ways, I enjoy that, because as I said, I like kids! But if you assume that my primary motive in making the effort to visit you (particularly if it involves forking out several hundred bucks on airfare) is to watch you watch your child shred magazines, or if there's nary a single kid-free moment in a period exceeding seven or eight hours, or if over 50% of what you say to me is about your kid and the style of parenting you've adopted, well, I probably won't be back to see you until the kid's at least in junior high--and for god's sake, don't ask if you can bring the kid and visit me! Because cute as s/he might be, your child is not the star I really want to see. And as I have other friends who manage to raise children while retaining an identity other than parent, I'll just hang out with them.

Posted by Holly at 8:38 AM | Comments (20)

July 20, 2006

It Says Sour

I wrote Monday about how I generally like children, but there are plenty of parents in the world who irritate me. Wednesday I wrote about dealing with parents and a child I liked, and today I'm sharing an anecdote about an encounter with a parent who totally pissed me off.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Target for some particular product. I don't remember what it was; I only remember that they didn't have it. They did, however, have Clueless on sale for $7.50, a spiffy anniversary edition dvd with lots of special features, and as I collect adaptations of Austen novels (in case you didn't know, Clueless is based on Emma) and as my VHS copy of Clueless has grown worn from use, I decided to buy the dvd. So I took my single item and went to stand in the express checkout line.

The woman ahead of me in the express lane was dealing with two children. She seemed a bit frazzled--her son, who seemed about six, wanted some gum, but kept picking out kinds that were sour, and she kept saying, "It says sour! See? It says sour!" I can be pretty good at tuning out other people, so I just ignored her and thought about the pleasant activities I had planned for the rest of the day--I think I was planning to sew. The cashier rang up and bagged my movie before the woman had removed her bags from the counter, and for some reason her son, who had not taken any of his mother's bags, picked up my bag.

"That's mine," I said, in a neutral voice with a neutral expression, and took the bag from him. While I didn't simply wait for him to hand the bag to me, I did not wrest it forcibly from his hand. I didn't smile and say, "Sorry, sweetie, but that's not your mama's bag; it's mine," but neither did I scowl and say, "Gimme that!" And having retrieved my package, I went about the business of handing a 20 dollar bill to the cashier.

The mother stood and eyed me for a moment. "I don't think my son meant to steal your bag," she said.

"I don't think he did, either," I said calmly, still focused on the cashier, who was handing me my change. I mean, why would he want a copy of Clueless?

"Well, you didn't need to be so nasty to him," the mother added, her voice rising.

And at that point I turned and gave the woman my full attention. "I wasn't nasty to your kid, you fucking bitch," I said. (And yes, I realize I exposed the child to genuine profanity. Shame on me, in some ways, and in other ways, WHATEVER. He'll hear it eventually anyway, if he hadn't heard it already. I wanted the mother to understand that there was a genuine difference between neutrality and nastiness.)

"Nice mouth!" she said, and headed out the door. I put my wallet back in my bag and headed out too. I thought briefly about saying something more to her--something like, "I hope you realize you spoke to your son far more sharply than I did," or, "Don't feel you have the right to criticize my behavior unless I also have the right to criticize yours"--but decided against it, got in my car and drove away. (Though in a later fantasy, I also considered the line, "There are some people who shouldn't have children, and you're obviously one of them. Don't take out on me the fact that you're stuck with two very big mistakes you clearly can't handle." But that, unlike the F-word, is something I would feel guilty for saying in front of a child.)

The point is, that was the moment when I said, officially, TO HELL WITH PARENTS WHO SEEK TO "CORRECT" THE BEHAVIOR OF EVERYONE BUT THEMSELVES AND THEIR CHILDREN.

I'm still not done.

Posted by Holly at 5:32 PM | Comments (5)

July 19, 2006

Why I Didn't Post Yesterday, or a Hurt Hip and a Cute Kid

As I explain in this post about my freak dancing accident, and in this post about my bursitis diagnosis, I've been in pain lately. That's one reason–actually two reasons--I didn't post anything here yesterday: sitting was uncomfortable, and then I ended up spending several hours seeing a doctor and having x-rays and working with a physical therapist. The other reason I didn't post yesterday is that I had a dinner invitation that took precedence over writing.

My hosts were a colleague, her husband and their three-year-old son, who is really damn cute: big smile, bright brown eyes and this head full of tousled curls because his mom has been two busy to cut his hair recently. I sat down next to him at the dinner table, remembered what I'd posted Monday, and asked myself, "All right; do I like kids or not?"

And I decided I really do, if the parents allow both me and the kid to treat each other like people.

I asked the kid how old he was, what his name was--basic ice breakers, to which he gave me basic answers. His dad said, "We forgot your knife," and went to the kitchen. And the kid said to me, "I have a blue knife."

"That's pretty cool. I don't have a blue knife," I said, picking up the knife beside my plate. "All my knives are the same color as this one. I used to have a red knife, but the people at the airport took it away from me." (All through grad school I hauled a swiss army knife on my key chain, in part because I got tired of trying to track down a bottle opener at parties.)

It turned out that not only was his knife blue, but it was shaped like a shark; his spoon was a green snake. We were able to have a very rewarding conversation about cutlery in general. I got him to sing me the ABC song. And his parents didn't interrupt him or me. They didn't insist that I interact with him the way they interact with him. They DID tell him not to jump on me, because I'd hurt myself recently; they did reprove him in the one thing that mattered so that I didn't have to do it.

And then his dad gave him a bath and he went to bed. Except that several hours later, he came downstairs and wanted to stay downstairs, and was not compliant when his dad told him to go back to bed. Calling upon my experience as a doting aunt, I said, "You know what I just realized? I just realized you haven't shown me your room. Can I see it?"

I know parents who at that moment would have intervened, would have said, "No, we'll get the kid upstairs"-- I guess because they don't want anyone else exercising authority over their child? But the kid accepted that I might really have an interest in his room, and he was certainly interested in showing it to me, so we all walked upstairs, and once the child was in his bed, his dad picked out a story to read him, and after that he went to sleep.

And I really enjoyed the whole evening. I liked the kid, I liked the way he was a part but not the entire focus of the evening, and I liked that his parents let me and the kid interact on our own terms, which included exercising a little grownup authority and sneakiness on my part.

Posted by Holly at 12:01 PM | Comments (6)

July 17, 2006

Go Away, Parent, You Bother Me

I think of myself as someone who likes children, mostly because there are a lot of children I like. OK, occasionally I meet a kid I truly dislike, same as with adults: a couple of my friends had five children, four of whom I found mildly repellent: they were not only badly behaved, but just plain weird--one in particular I rather expect to end up in the penal system. But generally, I'm well disposed to like kids. If I see a cute baby in a stroller, I usually smile and try to make eye contact. If I hear a child crying, I usually think, with a pang of genuine sympathy, "Oh, that poor thing."

I especially like kids old enough to walk and say at least a few words and feed themselves a high-chair-tray full of diced broccoli, but still small enough that you can pick them up and tickle them and play peekaboo with them: there's something profoundly wonderful about making those wee ones squeal and clap their hands in delight. I also like little kids whose parents buy them really cool electric train sets (that would be my brother and his wife). As I've watched my nieces and nephews grow up, I've noticed that sometimes they get hard to talk to around nine or ten (and they can stay that way for about a decade), but if a kid likes to read, I can usually manage a reasonably interesting conversation. And I'm gratified by the fact that the kids I like seem to like me OK, too.

There's a famous scene where WC Fields (I have no idea what movie it's from--I tried to find out) says to some child, "Go away, kid, you bother me," a particular expression of his general antipathy for children. I was always baffled by that in my youth, and offended as well: how could anybody who'd been a child dislike children on principle? I still sort of feel that way.... Because I really do like kids at least as often as I like adults. Change that: I like children more often than I like adults. It's certain parents, I've realized lately, that I really have problems with.

I've also realized as I've considered this matter that most of my attitudes about childrearing are influenced by my upbringing as the second of five children in a Mormon family. Not only did I have four other siblings, but I both watched and helped my mother raise the younger ones--especially my baby brother, who was born when I was almost nine. I also did a hell of a lot of babysitting for other Mormon families. And the entire situation left me, I honestly think, with some fairly sound ideas on the matter.

For better or worse, having children--plenty of them--is normalized in Mormon culture, and the culture accommodates the existence of children in many sensible ways the rest of society could benefit by imitating. Churches generally come equipped with playrooms for kids under three, and at least two or three people are given the specific assignment of taking care of all such children while everyone else goes to Sunday school. (I spent a couple of years in high school serving in the nursery.) Breastfeeding has always been encouraged in Mormondom, and many churches have a room where mothers can go to nurse or simply to tend a fussy child. Moreover, these rooms are often wired to the microphone in the chapel so the women can hear what's going on during Sacrament meeting. (In some wards, they even send an intrepid deacon--a boy 12 or 13 years of age--to bring these women the sacrament.) And because everyone has kids, people frequently trade babysitting during the day. Furthermore, teenagers know how to act around small kids, so you can trust many of them to care for your children for a couple of hours on a Friday night.

I realize not everyone lives like that. I realize that decent, reasonably priced child care is not necessarily a reason to join or remain active in the Mormon church if you don't believe its doctrines. I realize not everyone wants four to six (or eight) kids. Which is a damn good thing--as I mention in the comments to this post about my response to An Inconvenient Truth, reproducing has more impact on the environment than anything else we do. And while I don't advocate anything like China's "single child" policy and would never tell anyone how many children they could have, I don't think it's at all unselfish to have a huge family, which is what we were told at church: instead, I feel it's extremely selfish at this point in time to have a very large family, and that it's wise and a mark of consideration for everyone else you share the planet with to be content with fewer offspring. And indeed, even in Mormondom, families are getting smaller: couples frequently have three or four kids whereas 30 years they might have had seven or eight.

But I do think most--if not all--public buildings should have rooms where women can breastfeed or pump milk or whatever they need to do, and I also think that breastfeeding in public should be not only accepted but encouraged. I think new parents need a decent period of maternity/ paternity leave. I think K-12 education needs better funding at the local, state and federal level. I think anyone who doesn't like kids but still goes to Disneyland is an idiotic masochist.

In other words, like Jack Black in School of Rock, I believe that children are the future, and I want to see them well cared for. But there are plenty of ways in which I am not at all anxious to make someone else's child the center of my universe. And I've dealt with a lot of them lately.

This has become very long, so I'll continue it tomorrow. And maybe the day after that, too.

Posted by Holly at 9:19 AM | Comments (7)

March 28, 2006

Of Friends and Furniture

A friend recently mentioned to me that certain problems he's facing in a relationship are due in part to the fact that he too quickly arrives at the point "where you see the other person as a comfortable old piece of furniture you can take for granted and don't really have to think about."

I contemplated this notion a moment before speaking. "I don't think I've ever gotten to that point," I said.

The friend settled back in his chair, which was not particularly comfortable. "Really," he said archly. It was a skeptical challenge more than a curious request for information.

"Really," I said. "It has to do both with how I see people and how I see furniture. It's not at all that I'm a nicer person than you or anything, because the point I arrive at is the point where I think, ‘You are an ugly piece of junk and I can't bear looking at you any more and my life would be so much better if I could get you out of my house and replace you with something that isn't hideous and uncomfortable,' which is how I feel about the couch I have right now. I hate my couch. I just hate it. It was old to begin with and now my cat has shredded most of the upholstery. I really want to throw it out and replace it."

I have thought about the conversation in the days since it happened. It has helped me understand something about what I want from the people I rely on and the objects I recline on, and how I need to respect both.

It's hard not to take furniture for granted, in that you expect to come home and find it where you left it. But I have furniture I really like--my bed, for instance--and I still feel pleasure contemplating it. First of all, the frame has sentimental value: a double, it was the frame my parents bought when they first got married, and it was bequeathed to me in 1980 when I was a senior in high school. Secondly, the mattress is relatively new and very comfortable. Third, I maintain my bed in a way that gives me pleasure: I make it every morning shortly after I get out of it so it looks nice all day, and I like the bedspread (dark green chenille) and pillows with which I adorn it. Finally, I like sleep, so it's rewarding to head to my bed at the end of the day. So I don't think it can be said that I fail to treat my bed with the respect it is due, which is what really happens when you take something for granted.

Maybe part of what makes it easy for me not to take my dearest friends for granted is that I expect them to be worthy of my respect in that they should not be evil people who lie, cheat, steal and talk crap about stuff they don't understand; instead, I try to choose friends who are thoughtful decent people with interesting ideas about the world and the ability to express and explore those ideas. I don't like to hang out with people who are erratic or unreliable, because such people are annoying and hard to deal with, but I do like people who surprise and challenge me intellectually. I don't need a lot of variety in terms of activities or venues for those activities if what a friend has to say over dinner or after a movie amuses, informs or stimulates me. But if someone's an asshole with nothing interesting to say, I can't maintain respect for him/her. I find it hard to integrate people or things I don't respect into the landscape of my life; instead of finding them comfortable and familiar, I find them bothersome at best and loathsome at worst, and I want them to go away.

My couch is a loathsome object with nothing to say to me that I care to hear. Right now, none of my friends remind me of that couch, and that makes me happy.

Posted by Holly at 11:18 AM | Comments (4)

January 12, 2006

People Often Enjoy Sleeping with Co-Workers, But Get Little Support when Doing So

An interesting piece from the Independent UK detailing a study in Britain recommending that companies find ways to support people who have affairs with co-workers. Chantal Gaultier, the researcher, "found that while the employees said that their productivity had not been affected during the affair, all admitted that their workplace performance had decreased after their romance broke up." Ms. Gaultier goes on to conclude that "Although all of the couples split up, none of them regretted the affairs. Most said they would do it again if the occasion arose. While some of them were married, they did not express feelings of guilt, which shows the fact that people are going to be having these romances whatever companies do.

"The problem is that, after the split, these people often have to work together and see each other every day. This can have problems especially when there is no support or help for them from their employers."

I admit to dating a co-worker or two, and no one at work helped me out.... I can't really think what I would have wanted my employer to do, but then again, certain circumstances meant that the stakes weren't very high. However, I can think of one time when one coworker dated another coworker and it ended badly, and the employer really made things worse.... Most places have some sort of policy about how to deal with sexual harassment, but I think some sort of sensible policy that recognizes that dating does not always equal sexual harassment, would be in order.

Posted by Holly at 8:34 AM

January 11, 2006

Love vs. Whatever

As promised in yesterday's post, here is a list of scenarios about various ways people approach relationships and marriage in which love and other concerns might be in conflict.

Before presenting the list, I instructed my students to let memory and imagination run wild, to think of every dysfunctional relationship they'd either been in or witnessed.

A. Imagine that you go home and say, "Mom, Dad, guess what. I'm engaged. He's so great. He's a sculptor and, well, he's unemployed right now, and he just dropped out of school because he felt like his teachers couldn't really understand his vision but he's so talented, he's so great, and I'm going to drop out of school and go to work and support him until he makes it big." They say, "Um, OK, well, when can we meet him?" and you say, "When he gets out of rehab." I don't care what you say about marrying for love instead of more practical concerns--your parents would FREAK.

B. Imagine that a friend who grew up in a really conservative religious home in rural Iowa. She's always had a thing for bad boys, and she falls in love with this guy who spends all his money on his Harley. And he loves her too--he treats her really well--and they get engaged. Both families are HORRIFIED. Her family says, "Did you have to fall in love with a criminal?" His family says, "Did you have to fall in love with someone whose dad is going to call the cops as soon as someone lights up a joint at your reception?"

C. Imagine another friend. She's really smart, president of your sorority, has a 3.9 GPA, does all this other extra curricula stuff, gets accepted to Harvard medical school. Now, she loves Big Macs. And she finds an all-night McDonald's near her apartment in Cambridge and studies there. And she falls in love with the manager. He's a really nice guy but he dropped out of high school because he had a drug problem and his parents stuck him in rehab. He finally got a GED and he worked his way up the ladder at McDonald's and that is the extent of his ambition: he wants to work for McDonald's his whole life. They get engaged, and her family FREAKS. "You're going to be a radiologist and earn $300,000 a year and he's going to flip burgers his whole life and earn $30,000 a year! Can you really believe that is going to make you happy?" But is MONEY the ONLY issue? Then there are his friends. They HATE her. "She's f*ckin' bitch, she's such a snob, acts all high and mighty 'cause we drink Old Style, gets all mad when we want take him to boxing matches, blah blah blah."

D. Now imagine that your dad dumps your mom for a 19-year-old stripper. Who are they going to hang out with: his friends or hers? Will they HAVE any friends but each other? Will any of your siblings refuse to talk to him? Will you still talk to him?

E. How many of you know someone who broke up with a boyfriend or girlfriend because that person wasn't ambitious enough? Examples:
1. He's not on the football team any more, and I really want to date a football player because I'm a cheerleader, and that's just more fun
2. He asked me to marry him and I really love him, but all he wants to do is work for his dad and take over the farm. I want to travel, and I don't want to raise my kids in Truro, Iowa.

F. How many of you know someone who got dumped, and instantly went out and dated or made out with or slept with or MARRIED the first person who came along, just to prove that SOMEONE wanted them, that they weren't just going to be all heart-broken and sad over the creep who dumped them?

G. How many of you know someone who just can't stand to be alone? As in "I hate not having a boyfriend because I hate going to the movies by myself and it's no fun at parties if you don't already have a boyfriend and besides, I need somebody who, like, can fix my car and help me carry heavy things"–the issue of significant other as personal servant.

H. How many of you know someone who got married because they were pregnant or had gotten someone pregnant?

I. How many of you know someone whose favorite pastime is not just flirting, not just sleeping around, but trying to make people fall in love with them? How many of you have met a modern-day version (male or female) of Henry Crawford from Mansfield Park, who says, "I have two weeks to kill, and I want to make someone fall in love with me. I want her to smile at me, and keep a chair for me by herself wherever we are, and be all animation when I take it and talk to her; to think as I think, be interested in all my possessions and pleasures, try to keep me longer here in town, and feel when I go away that she will never be happy again. I want nothing more."

J. How many of you know someone who married for love, but who, as the years went by, either fell out of love, or found that they didn't love each other as much as they thought, or found that they couldn't stand to live together, and so got a divorce?

K. How many of you know someone who fell out of love but stayed in a bad marriage because of kids, or because they didn't have enough skills that they could get a decent job and support themselves if they left?

L. How many of you know someone who dated, got married, seemed to be completely in love with someone, then left the relationship because they'd realized they were gay?

M. How many of you know someone who got married just so they could get cheaper health insurance?

N. How many of you know someone who says, "I want to be a virgin when I get married, and I only want to have sex with a spouse I really love, my whole life." How about someone who says, "I want to get laid as often as possible by as many different people as possible." How many of you know people in between those two extremes? Now imagine how grossed out Austen would be--not just in a religious sense of sin, but in a sense of demonstrating a lack of self-worth and self-dignity-- if she could witness a Saturday night at some undergraduate meat market bar, all these girls just desperate to go home with some loser who is never going to speak to them again. Imagine her writing a book about that.

O. Now. Who can tell me about the dating and marriage practices among British people who own at least two houses, a huge house in the country as well as an apartment in London, who sends their kids to Oxford and who own at least one Rolls Royce and one Jaguar? OK. That is the modern version of the class of people that Austen is writing about, and if you don't know any of them today, you don't know that things have changed that much. I admit I don't know for sure, but my guess is that people of that class marry for much the same reasons as they did 200 years ago, and as evidence I offer the very public failure of a marriage between people of even higher classes, i.e., Charles and Diana--a marriage that was billed, by the way, as a love match, though we know now all about Camilla, and what Charles was really after in that marriage.

We have little room to take the moral high ground when it comes to relationships. Our legal system is better; our educational system is better; women have more rights and opportunities, but when it comes to the interpersonal stuff, I think it likely that on a whole, we date and have sex and get married and get divorced for reasons every bit as pragmatic and/or deplorable and/or convoluted and/or pure as any motives anyone had in Austen's day. Instead of thinking how relationships have changed since Austen's day, I want you to think about how they might be exactly the same. Your writing assignment for next week is to pick any relationship in Emma and to write about a relationship you personally have observed that parallels it closely in some way.

Posted by Holly at 1:22 AM | Comments (3)

January 10, 2006

Prudent Matches

I've been reading all over the blogosphere about the January 3, 2006 NY Times editorial by John Tierney, discussing how smart, educated straight women are likely to end up alone because they won't date dumb men with bad jobs: these women actually do something so calculated and unromantic as consider a man's earning potential in deciding whether or not to marry him.

I admit I haven't read the editorial--I don't subscribe to the paper version of the Times, so if I want to read its columnists on line, I have to pay for the privilege, and I wouldn't fork over my last dingy centime or any other piece of no-longer-current European currency to read a single word by that shithead Tierney. Thus, my response is based only on a few excerpts and synopses provided by others. And my reaction to the synopses and excerpts I have read is pretty much this:

Duh. So what.

I mean, OF COURSE INTELLIGENT, EDUCATED STRAIGHT WOMEN TEND TO THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH MONEY A GUY IS LIKELY TO EARN IN DECIDING WHETHER OR NOT TO MARRY HIM. AN ABILITY TO GRASP THE IMPORTANCE OF THINGS LIKE FINANCES IS PART OF WHAT MAKES THEM SMART AND PART OF WHAT HELPED THEM BECOME EDUCATED.

Before I pursue that premise any further, let me make one thing clear: I'm a big believer in love. I love a lot of people. I've been in love and it has changed my life in ways I'm still grateful for. I think falling in love is one of the best things that can happen to someone. I believe in the redemptive power and possibilities of love.

And I used to think that the fact that you really, truly loved somebody sort of meant you HAD to get married, because if you love someone as much as I loved a couple of people, your feelings for them OBLIGATED you to vow to spend the rest of your life with them.

Funny how things work out.

I'm sure someone will accuse me of being as cynical and cold-blooded as John Tierney seems to have labeled my entire demographic group for what I'm about to say next. But despite my belief in love I question whether or not it is really the main reason we marry, and perhaps I feel that way not only because I am a 42-year-old single woman with a PhD, but because I'm a 42-year-old single woman with a PhD who twice in her life rather expected to get married to men I loved whole-heartedly--once I was even engaged. But I didn't end up marrying either of those two men I loved so deeply. The fiancé I didn't marry because he was gay, though we're still friends, partly because he had the decency NOT to marry me--it would have been pretty easy for him to go through with the wedding so that he could live a conventional "straight" life, much like the guys in Brokeback Mountain (which I saw with Wayne over Christmas and which I plan to write about in the near future). The other I didn't marry for a whole range of reasons including the fact that he never asked me and that, as he informed me eventually, he was "ashamed" (his word--I'm not making this up) to love me because he knew his father wouldn't approve of me: I hadn't gone to an ivy league university, like his family did; I was from rural Arizona instead of the suburban Connecticut; I had had braces but not a nosejob as a teenager. (The guy's father was a plastic surgeon, and this rotten ex of mine had miserable teeth but a finely sculpted nose.) The fact that I was more likely to finish my dissertation and get a job than he was, was actually another strike against me--he felt threatened.

So yeah, I learned a few lessons there about prudence.

I also know too many Mormons who got married far too young to the wrong person--a person whom, in their limited experience, they honestly believed they loved. But they were 21, fairly naive, incredibly horny and anxious to remain a technical virgin long enough that they could get married in the temple, which means "obeying the law of chastity," or not committing fornication. What they actually married for, some of them discovered eventually, was lust, curiosity and boredom.

I also know people who got married because (as they admitted either at the time or when they tried to figure out how they ended up in such a screwed-up marriage) they felt it was the next step in adulthood, and although they claimed to love the person they married, the marriages didn't last long--though they often lasted longer than they should have.

I also know people who got married primarily to obtain health benefits for themselves or their partner. Some of those marriages have survived; some haven't. But as advocates for gay marriage point out, a legally recognized marriage is important not because it creates or recognizes any kind of LOVE, but because it creates and recognizes economic and social privileges and rights.

This whole discussion reminds me of what happened when I taught a course on the novels of Jane Austen at the University of Iowa in 2001. (Which isn't surprising given that the title of Tierney's article is "Male Pride and Female Prejudice," although the way the article is summarized--"Traditionalists seem to be a dwindling minority as men have come to appreciate the value of a wife's paycheck"–suggests that Tierney's never read Austen carefully enough to notice the plethora of fortune-hunting men chasing little girls with big dowries.) The course was an evening course that met once a week for two and a half hours. I had 20 students, 19 young women and one young man, which made for an interesting dynamic: there was one night when the guy had to leave early, and after he walked out of the room the rest of us looked at each other and burst out laughing--there was this cool slumber-party feel to the rest of the evening. (He also mentioned at the end of the semester that he had learned more from that class than from any other class he had ever taken--he had never realized how much he didn't know about women. Imagine!)

Anyway, although I loved the class, I was extremely disappointed when I collected the first batch of papers: all but two or three of them advanced the simplistic, facile assertion that "In Austen's day people married for money, but today, we marry for love." It pissed me off because it was wrong on both counts, and it meant the students weren't paying close attention either to the books we were reading or the lives of people around them. In Austen's day, money was certainly a consideration but it wasn't the only one, and there was and remains a difference between a cold-blooded hunt for the richest spouse you can possibly catch, and a realistic recognition of what kind of income you have to have if you want to raise two kids and send them to college.

So to prove my point I wrote up a list of various scenarios involving love, status, social background and wealth, which I'll post next time.

Posted by Holly at 9:19 AM | Comments (3)

December 17, 2005

prd & prjdc

One night while I was in Belgium, Matt, Leo and I went to see the most recent adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice at the Torsion d'Or (aka the Golden Fleece) in downtown Brussels. The novel is, of course, one of the greatest masterpieces ever composed in any language, and my favorite novel. I've read it at least a dozen times, taught it several times, hope to teach it again. (One of the best courses I ever taught was "All of Austen" at the U of Iowa--it was a blast.)

This adaptation is also titled Pride and Prejudice, but I think this is inappropriate. It should be called prd & prjdc, because it is an abbreviated, overly simplified affair, relying on the hard consonants of major plot points while forfeiting the vowel-like softness of nuance and complexity provided by character development, human growth and discovery.

There are reasons why Austen's novel remains a best seller almost 200 years after it was originally published, why it is read and understood easily even by modern high school students (I first read and loved it as a 15-year-old junior), why it is so often adapted into contemporary works. Bridget Jones's Diary, after all, is based on Pride and Prejudice, and BJD as novel, at least, does a good job of retaining major elements of the plot (not so much in the movie). Then there was Bride and Prejudice, a contemporary retelling set in India, LA and London. It includes a few great Bollywood dance numbers, and is loads of fun--as well as fairly loyal to the plot.

One reason for Jane's continued popularity is the fact that her language has aged very well. Austen's prose, while intellectually and syntactically complex, precise in vocabulary and laden with humor both understated and overt, is spare on similes and metaphors. S&M are, of course, evocative, and make for richness and beauty, but they only work if you understand both the literal and connotative meanings of the objects on each side of the comparison--otherwise, they inhibit rather than augment one's understanding of what's being evoked--"ox-eyed Athena" springs to mind.

But of course the main reason Austen remains popular is that she's a fabulous storyteller with keen insight into human psychology. And that keen insight is precisely what this new adaptation lacks.

In the original novel, Fitzwilliam Darcy, a haughty, disagreeable and exceedingly rich young gentleman of 28 discovers to his mortification that he is smitten with Elizabeth Bennet, a good-natured, intelligent, relatively poor 20-year-old gentlewoman with a bunch of boorish relatives. She's not conventionally pretty enough to appeal his tastes at first (a fact he announces loudly enough for her to overhear him), and she's too willing to express unconventional opinions to suit his sense of what a woman should be. But later he finds himself for some reason captivated by her "fine eyes," resolves to learn more of her, and as he observes firsthand her intelligence, her generosity, her courage, he falls head over heels in love with her.

Meanwhile Elizabeth has developed a fervid fancy for a ne'er-do-well named George Wickham, a hot young thing who drives all the ladies mad with his gallant manners and the sad, sad tales of how he was wronged by the nasty, dishonorable Mr. Darcy. Given how smitten she is with Georgy-Porgy, given how Darcy insulted her looks, given how taciturn and unpleasant Darcy invariably is, Elizabeth has to work even to maintain basic civility in her dealings with him.

But Darcy, reading her brittle politeness as interest in him because it flatters his vanity to do so, eventually proposes marriage to her, telling her that she must put him out of his misery and agree to marry him, even though she is decidedly inferior to him in status and connexions, and that he loves her against his will, his reason and his character. Even after she refuses this less-than-flattering offer of his hand, he believes that she rejects him primarily because he has wounded her vanity "by [his] honest confession of the scruples that long prevented [his] forming any serious" design on her.

Elizabeth struggles to retain her composure and her temper as she replies, "You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner...You could not have made me the offer of you hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it."

Darcy is mortified and astonished that anyone would dare to FORM such an opinion of him, let alone express it, but he remains silent as Elizabeth continues:

From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.

But this abhorrence of Darcy is softened and abridged, if not outright removed from the new adaptation, having been replaced with what my friends both pointed out was an "undeniable sexual attraction" between Darcy and Elizabeth. Furthermore, instead of taking place in the drawing room of the Collins' home, as it does in the book, the proposal scene in the movie occurs outside in the rain, with Darcy and Elizabeth so moved by each other's physical presence that they very nearly kiss, even after insulting each other.

Make no mistake: the novel Pride and Prejudice is full of sexual attraction, and Austen makes it clear that a good marriage needs to have a healthy dose of it to succeed. But Elizabeth is not the least bit sexually attracted to Darcy at that point: she has the hots for Wickham, and her attraction for that sexy little bad boy was one reason she is so repulsed--physically, emotionally and intellectually--by Darcy. But oh yeah, Elizabeth's crush on Wickham has been deleted from the new movie too.

Austen also makes clear that in her view of things, sexual attraction must be supported and maintained by a healthy intellectual and emotional attraction: Mr. Bennet, after all, married a girl he was sexually attracted to, only to discover that she was an idiot with whom he could never have a meaningful conversation. And so that marriage could give no lasting pleasure to either partner in it--in fact, it becomes a source of great unhappiness, not only to the two spouses, but to the children it produced.

One of the reasons the novel is so satisfying is that both of the main characters change; both discover their weaknesses and become better people by interacting with the other. John Stuart Mill describes marriage as a relation where "there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them--so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development." That's what you get in the novel Jane Austen wrote, and it occurs precisely because the two partners in the (eventual) marriage are able to recognize and act upon valid critiques of their behavior from the other.

For instance, Darcy's letter, in which he explains his dealings with Wickham and his interferences in Bingley's intentions towards Jane, allows Elizabeth to admit to herself that

Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. --Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.

After inadvertently encountering Darcy at Pemberly and seeing how he has changed because of her, Elizabeth begins "to comprehend that he was exactly the man, who, in dispositions and talents, would most suit her." Months later, when Darcy finally manages to make Elizabeth the offer of his hand in a way she is willing to accept, he says, of his earlier attempt,

The recollection of what I then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘had you believe in a more gentleman-like manner.' Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me;--though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.... I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.... I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit....I was spoiled by my parents, who...allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared to my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You have taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.

BUT THAT'S GONE FROM THE FREAKIN' LOUSY NEW MOVIE! In it, Darcy never owns up to making any mistakes; he's always just this great guy this skinny impertinent girl doesn't have the sense to appreciate. His "pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased" were never insufficient, and Elizabeth's final conversation with her father makes that clear: she goes on and on about how she misunderstood him, how they all misunderstood him! She learns nothing about herself, aside from the fact that she's really lucky to have this fabulous hunky rich guy in love with her. I could scarce keep my countenance....wait a minute: I didn't even bother to TRY to keep my countenance: at that point I scowled fiercely and flipped off the screen.

I admit that I preferred Brenda Blethyn's performance as Mrs. Bennet to Alison Steadman's horrible rendering of the character--Mrs. Bennet is supposed to be a ditzy, annoying airhead, but I couldn't stand how shrill and brittle she was in the 1995 mini-series, especially when contrasted to Benjamin Whitrow's witty, dry, understated performance as Mr. Bennet. (I don't consider the performance of Mr. Bennet in the new version interesting enough to warrant mentioning the name of the actor who played him.) Judi Dench was something to behold as Lady Catherine de Bourgh: the audience gasped when she first appeared on screen. But there was so little to the role as it was written--I would bet Ms. Dench spent longer in hair and make-up than she did learning the lines or preparing for the role, because an actress of her caliber could master that particular part in her sleep.

And in my opinion, there is not praise enough in the world to do justice to Julia Sawalha's energetic, rollicking, scene-stealing performance as Lydia in the 1995 version! Wan little Jena Malone, who managed to do just fine as the pregnant Christian in Saved!, provides a Lydia who is overwhelmingly forgettable and insipid. (which I guess doesn't matter since Wickham's part is so stunted and curtailed that her elopement with him doesn't have the force or significance it should.)

I suppose I should say something about the principals.... Keira Knightley bugs--at least, she bugs me. I admit I was glad when I heard she was named Britain's Sexiest Woman, (even sexier than Sienna Miller) because she's not exactly big-breasted, and as someone else whose assets aren't all on her chest, I am happy when women are recognized as devastatingly sexy even when they lack gigantic mammary glands. But Knightley, to borrow the criticism Darcy offers of Jane, "smiles too much." And she doesn's just smile: she does these weird things to her mouth: bites her lip; starts to smile, stops, then goes ahead and smiles; smirks. She can be charming, sure: but she lacks the obvious intelligence and thoughtfulness of someone like Claire Danes, which I think are necessary to play Elizabeth. (Claire Danes is who I would have liked to see in the part--if it had been better written, that is.)

As for Matthew MacFadyen, I liked him well enough in MI5 (known as Spooks in the UK), but I didn't think he was a good Darcy. (I admit I watched MI5--and everything else MacFadyen has been in--about a year ago so I could speculate about what kind of Darcy he might make.) He seemed to think he was playing Heathcliff.... He never commanded my attention on the screen. I could say to myself, "Oh, yeah, the heroine's love interest is back; I should probably pay attention to this interaction," but I would have been just as happy to look at something else.

Then there's the matter of the ending. The version I saw in Brussels ended with Mr. Bennet's command that "If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure." But I've been told that the version released in the US ends with some cheesy post-nuptial discussion about what Darcy should call Elizabeth, a discussion culminating in her declaration that he should address her as "Mrs. Darcy" only when she is at her happiest. I cannot but be grateful that I was spared seeing that.... I shudder to think of it.

In my opinion, credit for the fabulousness of the 1995 version goes to Andrew Davies, who wrote the screenplay. I would gladly drink this guy's bathwater... I'll watch anything he signs his name to. He has written plenty of adaptations of meaty British novels, including truly amazing versions of Middlemarch and Moll Flanders. His adaptations are always LONG, as in four or five or six hours: he devotes the time and care necessary to translate a 300-page novel into a fairly faithful film.

However, Deborah Moggach, the writer of the new version, should have her computer taken from her until she promises not to write any more trite, superficial shit.

For more analysis of the movie, check out two posts by FrankenGirl: Pride and Prejudice Publicity: Gender, Glamor, Sex and Film: Pride & Prejudice 2005 (I’m not proud. I’m just misunderstood.)

If you're a Janeite, you should see this movie, because Janeites want to know how Jane's work lives in the modern world. The movie isn't vile, exactly, just profoundly inferior to the source material. If you're not a Janeite, you might want to see this movie because you might not care how inferior it is to the original, and I have heard from enough people who don't know the original well and liked this a lot to believe that it might be OK in and of itself--and I readily admit I can't watch it that way, because I'm far too invested in the novel. But don't buy it, or anything like that: buy the 1995 (UK release date) mini-series, and Bride and Prejudice, and oh yeah, the book! Don't forget the book.

Posted by Holly at 8:24 AM | Comments (11)

November 27, 2005

Hosts and Guests

Sunday was my last full day in Brussels. I was sitting at Matt's computer doing my email when he walked in to say good morning. We began discussing what we'd do on my last day, and I felt compelled to ask him if I'd been an OK guest.

He frowned for a moment, then nodded. "You've been an OK guest," he said, emphasizing the "OK" while looking away. Then he looked right at me. "You're not the easiest person to live with."

I frowned and nodded myself. I already knew this. At this point in my life I generally find other people hard to live with, and I figure it must work both ways. I'm very habituated to living alone, to managing my money, my space, my stuff and my time as I see fit. I first did it when I was 23, after my mission (which involved as little privacy as possible--you're allowed to use the bathroom on your own, but the rest of your time is supposed to be spent in the presence of an assigned partner, so you have fewer opportunities to break the rules). The parents of one of my friends in Tucson had a studio apartment they offered to rent me, and it seemed like a good place to live while I finished my bachelor's degree. I was surprised at how much I liked living alone. Yes, I was often lonely, but there are many, many worse things in life than loneliness, and one of them is sharing a kitchen with someone who never does the dishes, either properly or at all.

While thinking about these matters, I asked Matt if he had ever lived alone. He said he'd had his own room in the dorms in college, but we agreed that's not really living alone. Among my friends and family are what seem to me a remarkable number of people who have reached the age of 35 never having lived alone, or having lived alone in a small apartment for a year or two after college, before they move in with a significant other.

Whereas out of my 42 years on this planet, I've lived alone for 16 of them, and over eight of those years were spent not merely in an apartment but a house, so I had a yard to myself as well.

When Elizabeth Bennet (the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, for anyone unfortunate enough not to recognize that name) and her aunt visit the ladies at Pemberly one afternoon, it becomes clear to Caroline Bingley that Darcy admires Elizabeth. Jealous and upset, Miss Bingley makes a nasty comment about Elizabeth's appearance. Having failed to goad Darcy into declaring Elizabeth unattractively coarse and changed beyond recognition, Miss Bingley then complains that Elizabeth's nose lacks character while her complexion lacks brilliancy, adding, "in her air altogether, there is a self-sufficiency without fashion which is intolerable." I am sure there is considerable self-sufficiency in my air; I hope it is not entirely intolerable, but no doubt it's part of what makes me hard to live with. At least I can comfort myself with the fact that these days it's not unfashionable to be rather self-sufficient.

I like other people; I like them quite a lot. I think I'm capable of great loyalty and I try to be a generous and compassionate friend. But I also really like solitude, and I really like being in control of my time, my money, my space and my stuff. This is one reason I have often said that were I ever to marry, I would find it ideal to live next door to my husband, or perhaps share a big house with separate households in different wings or on different floors. That way we'd see each other easily enough but we wouldn't have to ask each other where the scissors are because we'd each have our own pair, in our own office. I know that seems like a mundane example of how it's inconvenient to share space with another human being, but the thing about living with someone is that it IS mundane--it's what you do every single day: accommodate the most quotidienne needs and demands of another human being.

When you're a host or a guest you do the same thing, but for a few days or weeks, instead of a few years or decades.

You could not ask for more generous or accommodating hosts than Matt and Leo. They feed me better than I feed myself. They go out of their way to amuse me. They take me places. They spend time with me and also leave me time to myself. They have a lovely home and make me very comfortable in it.

I try to be a reasonable guest: I try to minimize my requests; I try not to spend too much time in the bathroom (though it does take a long time to wash my hair); I try to do what I can for myself without being intrusive or demanding--for instance, I'll make tea for myself, because I can do that with a minimum of fuss, but I haven't insisted that anyone show me how to work the espresso machine. I am happy to let my hosts go off to the gym and leave me at home to blog (though I should really be doing some preparation for teaching--in less than 48 hours, I'll be back in the classroom).

But the fact still remains that I know darn good and well that however happy I am to have someone come visit me, I am also glad when s/he leaves and I get my space and my routine back. And I know Matt and Leo feel the same way about me--and I don't just come for a weekend, either; because it's so expensive to fly from the states and because Matt is one of my dearest friends, I always come for a week or two. And I know it's because Matt loves me that he lets me be his guest for so long, even though I'm hard to live with.

Which really does make me lucky, lucky, lucky.

Read about the rest of my trip in Someplace High in Paris, Il Neige, I Went: Europe, and Happy Thanksgiving. Get the details on coming home in Welcome Home.

Posted by Holly at 11:59 PM | Comments (3)

November 15, 2005

Hopeless Cases and Lost Causes

This is something I wrote during the summer, about a relationship I knew was doomed but still wasn't ready to abandon--I was so not ready to abandon it that I couldn't even acknowledge the real subject matter in the piece. I read it now and its intensity strikes me as strange, but then again, although there are situtions in my life I wouldn't describe as optimal, right now there's nothing I feel I should quit. Anyway, I came upon this piece and thought it might be better to post it when I don't feel all overwrought than when I do.

***

How many times do I have to say "I give up" before I believe it and mean it?

Or,

Why do I say "I give up" before I believe it and mean it?

One of my lessons in this incarnation must certainly be how to give up. I SUCK at it. We had all these lessons and lectures at church on "Enduring to the End," but what I really needed was some training in the fine art of judicious giving up, knowing when to quit, cutting my losses, calling it a day.

I knew within ten minutes of saying good-bye to my parents at the Missionary Training Center that I had made the biggest mistake of my life by going on a mission. But did I call my parents at that point and say, "Uh, yeah, Mom and Dad, I was wondering if I could catch a ride back to Arizona with you?" NO! I not only endured all freakin' nine weeks of the MTC, that "saccharin-coated hell-hole," as I had the good sense to call it at the time; I stayed on a mission for 18 and a half goddamn months, becoming more and more miserable, more and more ill, more and more damaged--but hey, I endured to the end of my mission and got a freakin' honorable release. It took me another three years to admit that I could not remain a Mormon, three years of struggle and failure and despair.

So why didn't I give up?

Because I didn't want to seem like a quitter.

That's a big reason I stayed in grad school and finished my dissertation: I didn't know how not to endure to the end.

I admit I'm happier with the PhD than the certificate of release signed by my mission president.

A therapist once told me that in the case of most marriages that end within three years, the people involved know BEFORE the wedding that it's a mistake, but it takes them three years of suffering and misery to admit it.

Why is it so hard?

Supposedly Saint Jude, who was martyred along with Saint Simon by being clubbed to death in Persia, is the patron saint of Lost Causes and Hopeless Cases. My book on patron saints states that "Because his name--Judas--is identical to that of the infamous disciple who betrayed Christ, this Saint was long neglected by the Faithful as an object of veneration. Consequently, he was available to take interest in even the most impossible, hopeless, or desperate cases."

I think he must be mine.

But who, WHO is the patron saint of cutting your bleedin' losses?

Posted by Holly at 7:48 AM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2005

Heat

Another piece culled from old files, this was written five or six years ago.

I was very depressed last week until Wednesday night, when my friend and former f*ck buddy Sergei came over. I called him because I hadn't heard from him in weeks. He himself was terribly depressed, having just been named "Employee of the Month" at Barnes and Noble, an honor that means he's a responsible grownup who must renounce all claims to being a hip, cool bad boy. Since we were both depressed, we decided to commiserate. He showed up with a bottle of tequila and Heat, this long Al Pacino movie, because there's a scene featuring the very Heckler and Koch assault rifle he owns (and which I fired one day at the shooting range). We watched the movie and downed a few shots and he gave me a back rub and then we ended up wrestling and it was just like Ado Annie says: "Every time I lose that wrestlin' match, I have a funny feelin' that I won...." So I have this very attractive man straddling me and pinning my hands to the ground, and all he does is say, "OK, kiss me." So I get one lousy kiss and then he gets up and goes home because after all he has a girlfriend and I don't approve of infidelity.

Posted by Holly at 7:57 AM | Comments (2)

October 13, 2005

Checking My Fluids

Tuesday I collected a batch of essays and yesterday I went to a coffee house to start grading them, a time-honored technique adopted by graduate students everywhere: grading is often so boring at best and so loathsome at worst, that it helps to go someplace where you've really got to grade stuff, can't get up and check your email or wash your dishes or start a load of laundry instead of plowing through the papers, no matter how awful they are. I sat down with my decaf medium mocha, regular milk but no whipped cream, served in a mug instead of a paper cup (my standard order these days), hauled out my folder and my pen, and started reading. At the top of the stack was an essay that began, "The as an average student I carry many things with me schoolwork, personal items, utensils for completing the tasks at hand, and not to mention the emotional aspect of my day."

The only thing to do at that point was to bury my face in my hands and mutter, "Dear god, help me." Which prompted a man seated at a table near me to say, "Kids getting you down, are they?"

I looked up. "They are indeed," I said. "Just listen to this," and I read him the sentence.

"That's pretty awful," he said. "What are you reading this stuff for?" he asked.

"I'm an English professor," I told him, and asked what he did. He was significantly older than the kind of guy I usually go for, but I have a long history of dating men who are too young for me, and decided recently that I would cultivate an interest in age-appropriate men. This guy had, I learned, a grown son, but he also had a full head of well-coiffed hair, and he was in good shape, wiry and lean. Which is why I felt a twinge of disappointment when he told me he invested in real estate for a living. Shit, I thought. That might mean he's a soulless, money-grubbing Republican. Still, I was even more disappointed when he quit chatting me up in order to turn to his newspaper and his extra large beverage in a paper cup.

So I turned back to my stack of papers and graded a few more. But then the guy and I happened to look up at the same time, and he asked me, "So what made you decide to become an English professor?"

"I love books," I said. "I knew pretty early what I wanted to be when I grew up." I mentioned that I'm a writer too, and he had questions about that. I told him I'd written a book about being a missionary in Taiwan before renouncing organized religion entirely. At that point he was intrigued enough that he left his table and sat down at mine, which was OK with me.

"Before I elaborate, let me ask you this," I said. "Are you devout in any way? Because if you are, I want to avoid telling the story in a way that will offend you." Which was true. But I also knew that if he said, "Jesus Christ is my best friend, as well as my Lord and Savior," I would feel compelled to say to him, after telling him about my mission in the blandest of euphemisms, "Well, it's been lovely chatting with you, but I must get back to these essays."

Instead, he said, "I appreciate religion in general, but I'm more of a spiritual seeker than someone dedicated to a particular path. I spent a lot of time studying things like Buddhism and yoga." Which was pretty much the right answer. It's good to meet a man who can spell chakra.

So we proceeded to spend 45 minutes or so discussing charkas, how gorgeous Arizona is (a topic always dear to my heart), woodworking (which he does and which I have long wanted to do) and chocolate, which he doesn't eat, but which I eat a lot of. Turns out he eats a very healthy diet--that was green tea in his big paper cup, not coffee--but has never had acupuncture.

We also talked about what we like to do for fun. As it happens we both like hiking and don't care for sky diving, and neither of us owns a boat. It was pretty obvious he was interested in me, even before he asked me if I dated much. "Not lately," I said. "Not here. Haven't had the opportunity." And soon thereafter we exchanged email addresses.

He extended his hand, and I, always a fan of a good, firm handshake, was happy to take it. But after shaking my hand, he held onto it, moved his thumb and forefingers down around my fingers, and, quite obviously and deliberately, palpated my knuckles. Given some of the things we'd talked about, I wouldn't have been surprised or distressed had he turned my hand over to reveal my palm so he could inspect my head, heart and life line. But feeling up my knuckles, before he'd even asked me on a real date.... Well, I wasn't sure what kind of girl he thought I was, but I needed to find out. "What's that about?" I asked. "Trying to see if I've got arthritis?"

"I was checking your fluids," he said.

"How are they?" I asked.

"Better than most people's," he said.

"I try not to get dehydrated," I said.

"It's not good for you," he said.

"No," I said.

I admit, no one has ever closed a conversation with me quite that way before. And I also admit flashed for a moment on the rant Sterling Hayden, in the role of Brigadier General Jack D Ripper, delivers about Communist efforts to "impurify our precious bodily fluids" in Dr. Strangelove. But actually the gesture seemed--well, odd but not creepy. Idiosyncratic but not scary. Perhaps I could even be convinced that it was a mark of genuine concern for my well-being.... Well, maybe not. But I still rather hope he emails me before too long.

Posted by Holly at 7:38 AM | Comments (4)

October 7, 2005

Wasabi Potato Cakes

There have been three or four times in my life when I've lost a significant amount of weight (fifteen pounds or so) without dieting. Instead, something awful has happened--a serious illness, clinical depression, a devastating breakup, or some combination thereof--that has made it hard to choke down food, and made the food hard to digest once it was down.

Recently I lost over ten pounds without trying. I wasn't depressed or ill, but I was extremely anxious. It had to do, first of all, with the standard post-traumatic Sunstone syndrome I go through every year. But what I didn't want to admit to many people (though I did tell Tom and his wife about it) was that what troubled me most was this visceral certainty that I lacked a fundamental piece of bad information about the romance I'd begun at Sunstone.

Every morning for a month I'd wake nauseated and grossed out. I'd raise a carton of orange juice to my mouth (I live alone, so I feel entitled to drink straight from the carton) and my throat would contract after a swallow or two. Along about noon, I'd find myself ravenous and toss a salad, but I could never finish it. At dinner I'd grill a cheese sandwich and end up throwing the last few bites away. As for dessert, I couldn't even go there! The way I felt reminded me of how my sisters described morning sickness, except that instead of random smells making me want to puke, it was random thoughts: I'd think suddenly of this guy I was utterly enamored of, and I'd feel dread, foreboding and a trace of sheer physical revulsion, which, to state the obvious, is not a good sign.

Eventually I discovered what it was I hadn't known. Soon thereafter, the relationship went away, and with it, much of my anxiety. But my appetite didn't return immediately, which was OK with me. I'm generally quite healthy, with an appetite to match; I'm a decent cook, and I enjoy food. But I discovered that fitting into clothes I haven't been able to wear for four years offers certain enjoyments too. Having begun losing weight, I rather wanted to continue.

And I managed to be good enough most of the time, losing a few ounces every couple of days. But I had to work at it, had to tell myself to order a small mocha, no whipped cream. Had to say to myself, "No, Holly, you DON'T need to make cookies." Had to make myself cover my plate and say, "I'm done here" before I finished all my french fries.

But this morning I awoke again with that violent internal retching that prevents me from even thinking about solid food. It's not anxiety today--well, maybe a little, because I do feel harried and harassed by the many, many things I have to do, like shower, get dressed and go to a 4 p.m. meeting on campus. But mostly, it's wasabi potato cakes.

One of the nicest duties of my job is meeting the visiting writers we bring to campus, attending their readings, then going out to dinner with them. It's always a fun evening: food, drink and conversations with some cool writer, six or seven members of the English and creative writing faculty, occasionally a partner or two. We have a standard reservation at one of the nicer restaurants in town, and the service is almost always provided by a genial, efficient waitress who knows us and our preferences quite well. When she's taking drink orders, before I even have to ask, she tells me what the martini special is. If it sounds good, I'll try it; if not, I go with a cosmo.

The flip side of going to a restaurant so often that the waitress knows what you'll ask before you ask it, is that you know what will be on the menu before you open it. I have a favorite standard item I can always fall back on: a nice steak covered in a delightful piquant pepper sauce. And sometimes they have cool and interesting specials. But sometimes they don't.

Earlier in the day, I'd taught a Stuart Dybek essay about a bunch of sixth-graders going on a field trip to a slaughter house, and the descriptions of cows being clubbed to death, of an assembly line of swine hanging by their hind feet to facilitate the slitting of their throats, after which they are allowed to watch each other bleed to death as they squeal in terror and pain.... well, discussing that with a group of undergrads left me with the sense that I didn't want to eat red meat again any time soon.

But this restaurant isn't known for its vegetarian items. Fish, I thought, I'll order fish. I almost went with the tuna.... but it was on the cheap menu and didn't come with any side dishes. One of the specials was crispy-skinned salmon, accompanied by a few spears of grilled asparagus--AND wasabi potato cakes.

I couldn't help it: I was skeptical. It was farmed salmon, for one thing, which just doesn't taste as good as wild salmon, and isn't as healthy, either. And then there were those wasabi potato cakes.... I hated to be accused of culinary cowardice: after all, this wasn't any random pairing of a strangely colored condiment with a familiar white starchy food, like ketchup-covered banana chunks; no, it was nouvelle cuisine, the blending of east and west! My colleagues on either side of me announced their intention to go with the salmon. I figured I might as well ask this trusted waitress for her honest advice.

"Oh, I serve so many of those wasabi potato cakes! We can barely keep ‘em in the kitchen!" she assured me. And I placed the fateful order.

As you should surmise from my subtle foreshadowing, the entire meal SUCKED--well, I guess the asparagus was OK. When our plates arrived, a colleague who had wisely ordered something else commented, "Oh look, it's the dish with hair," because each item in the meal was stacked on top of each other, the entire structure covered with finely shredded, deep-fried potatoes, mounded high on top and trailing down the sides in curls, so that the whole thing looked like a fuzzy brown muppet. The salmon was not only bland, but covered by an especially greasy tartar sauce I had to scrape off. There were a couple of breaded, deep-fried tomato slices buried in there (had that element been mentioned in the menu, I would never have ordered the dish, because I don't like tomatoes), and as for the wasabi potato cakes, they were just spicy patties of hashed browns, undercooked on the inside and burnt on the outside.

The meal was so bad, it even put me off dessert. I ordered a black forest trifle, but didn't have the appetite to finish it. I wasn't even as buzzed as I wanted to be because we have a two-drink limit, but I guess there's something to be said for being sober enough to drive home at the end of a two-and-a-half-hour long dinner, whether the food is good or bad.

I got home, got ready for bed, couldn't sleep, took a sleeping pill. I did manage to fall asleep soon thereafter and stay asleep for a long time, but I woke up feeling just like you'd expect. I've been up for seven hours and have yet to put anything of substance into my stomach. I think it might be seven hours more before I do. The only consolation for feeling so queasy is that the evening of excess won't show up on the scale or on my hips.

Posted by Holly at 3:27 PM

September 21, 2005

The Exclusive Territory of Straight Men

There are lots of posts on this topic. They are, in order of posting, Mormon Social Taboos, A Happy Marriage with a Good Man, the post you're reading right now, The Society of Buggers, Brokeback Mountain, Old Testament Weirdness, It's Not Just Mormon Men Who Don't Want to Lose the Beard, The SL Tribune Joins the Chorus, Will, Grace and Angels in Brokeback America: Straight Women, Gay Men and Mormonism (the introduction), Will, Grace and Angels in Brokeback America: Straight Women, Gay Men and Mormonism (the excerpt), Marriage Manifesto, The Ex-Exes from Exodus and the Agency of Gay Men, Sex, Misogyny and My Blog Stats, Narcissism and Misogyny, and Really Long Comment, In Which I Disavow the Cow Part.

Let me quote a paragraph from the essay by Ben Christensen in the most recent Dialogue that upset me so.

I don't understand people who call themselves liberal and progressive but are threatened by homosexual reparative therapy enough to try to stop people like me from having that option. In my mind, this kind of thinking is anti-progressive. The whole point of the civil rights and women's liberation movements was to allow blacks, women, and other minorities to break free of what had been their traditional roles. We live in a world where it's okay for blacks to do what was once considered "white" and for women to do what was once considered "male"--get an education, have a career, etc. Why then is it not politically correct for a gay man to venture into what is usually considered the exclusive territory of straight men--to marry a woman and have a family--if that's what he chooses to do?

God, where do you even start with a paragraph like that.

I guess I'll do this sentence by sentence.

"I don't understand people who call themselves liberal and progressive but are threatened by homosexual reparative therapy enough to try to stop people like me from having that option."

I'm not "threatened" by homosexual reparative therapy, and I would never stop anyone who truly wanted to pursue it, provided that person is over 18 and pursues the endeavor willingly. I would add, however, that while I would never "stop" someone from pursuing reparative therapy, neither would I particularly respect a decision to pursue it. There is considerable evidence that while it may convince people not to have gay sex, it doesn't make them straight. And it seems a sign of such self-loathing and desperation, that I can't help feeling the time, effort and money devoted to reparative therapy could be better spent in other ways.

"The whole point of the civil rights and women's liberation movements was to allow blacks, women, and other minorities to break free of what had been their traditional roles."

Actually, no, that was not the whole point of the civil rights and women's liberation movement. Both of those movements had and continue to have many goals during their long existences. An important goal of the civil rights movement in the 1960s was to pass and enforce legislation that would remove the threat of violence blacks so often lived under. It was not simply about acquiring the right to go to school or keeping a seat on the bus; it was about living without the fear of lynchings and murders. The same goes the feminist movement: there has been a long struggle to force law makers and law enforcement agencies to treat sexual and domestic violence as they crimes they should be.

"We live in a world where it's okay for blacks to do what was once considered ‘white' and for women to do what was once considered ‘male'--get an education, have a career, etc."

Actually, we live in a world where some people think it's OK for blacks to do what is still considered "white" and for women to do what is still considered "male" (interesting that the only examples Christensen cites are the basic human rights of getting an education, seeking meaningful employment) but the fact that it might be "OK" for racial and sexual minorities to pursue the same goals as white men does not mean they have as many opportunities to do so or receive the same rewards for their efforts.

"Why then is it not politically correct for a gay man to venture into what is usually considered the exclusive territory of straight men--to marry a woman and have a family--if that's what he chooses to do?"

Wow.

Has this guy REALLY never read about the social structure of ancient Greece, where citizens (who were always and only male) routinely had both wives and male lovers? Has he never read The Symposium? Has he never heard the theory that Shakespeare was gay? Has he never heard anything of Oscar Wilde's biography (Wilde married and fathered two children) or read Blanche Dubois' speech about why her young husband shot himself in A Streetcar Named Desire?

It is not accurate to say that marrying a woman and having a family has usually been considered the exclusive territory of straight men, since "straight" and "gay" are relatively new categories. Before that, there were pretty much just men, and even men who had male lovers routinely married women and conceived children for any number of reasons, including a desire to appear respectable, to be "righteous," to appease parents who wanted grandchildren and heirs, or simply because that's what people did.

It's called "having a beard," Ben, trying to appear butch so you can get on in society, and men who wanted to do so have managed to have both wives and male lovers for millennia.

And of course it must be pointed out that one need not enter into a straight marriage to have children. There is such a thing as artificial insemination. Lesbian couples manage to bear children and gay men manage to adopt or father children. One of my friends fathered a child with a cherished friend who was a lesbian; she and her partner have primary custody of the child, but my friend is an involved and dedicated father, and his partner is an active parent as well.

Christensen's comments reveal his factual ignorance, his emotional and spiritual naivete, and a profound sense of entitlement. He tells us he feels he was dealt a bum hand by being gay, but he also feels he should retain the blessings and privileges of white male domination and patriarchy. He should still be head of his narrow little world, in which the civil rights and women's movement are about "education" and "career" and marriage is a "territory."

Having been involved in the struggle to legalize gay marriage since the early 90s, after a lawsuit on the issue was filed in Hawaii (which brought about an alliance between those two historical enemies, the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church) and believing that couples of consensual adults who desired to have a union of love recognized by the state deserved that right regardless of sexual orientation, I was astonished in the late 1990s to meet gays and lesbians who believed that not only was the right to marry something they did not need, but that if acquired, it would harm the gay community. Marriage was so sexist, so patriarchal, so obviously an economic and political proposition designed to support a diseased status quo, that opting into it would not bring equality to gay people but would instead insure that one partner in all marriages--gay or straight--remained submissive while the other was dominant. The better option, they argued, was to pursue non-traditional, egalitarian partnerships, and wait for the straight world to abandon marriage after it recognized how vastly superior these egalitarian gay relationships were.

Christensen's essay supports that argument. Marriage as he sees and practices it is perhaps socially respectable, but it is not ethically respectable. It is born of ignorance and fear rather than wisdom and courage. It is neither generous nor enlightened but is instead a self-serving attempt to claim as many of the privileges and as much of the power that society can possibly offer him. If that is marriage, it is something we should all shun.

Posted by Holly at 7:32 AM | Comments (2)

September 1, 2005

A Little Distance

A few months ago I was thinking about how I'd like to spend next summer in Europe, but it would be really inconvenient because the post office will only hold mail for 30 days, plus I have a cat and a house full of stuff I can't just go off and leave. Then I thought about my colleagues who are married or have live-in partners, and how they gallivant around the planet and leave their spouses back home to take care of everything. "That's what I need," I thought. "I need a live-in boyfriend who will babysit my cat and keep an eye on my stuff while I go to Europe for six months."

I told Tom about this. "Holly," he said, "most people want a boyfriend or a girlfriend not so they can go off and leave them, but so they can be with them."

"Yeah," I said, "I know. But I've always thought most people put way too much emphasis on the whole togetherness part of a relationship."

I wasn't just being perverse when I said this. My closest friends live in Brussels, Hollywood and Seattle. The guy in Brussels in particular I hardly ever see–-the last time was May 2002, and that was because he bought me a roundtrip plane ticket from Phoenix to Brussels. Given that he was so generous to me, and given the fact that I can call western Europe for three or four cents a minute, I figure it's my moral duty to call him often. As for the other two, weekend and evening calls on the cell phone are free. I feel we do a pretty good job of maintaining warm and intimate friendships. Not only that, but I was in a couple of long-distance relationships, and I liked certain things about them. For one thing, I write fabulous love letters, a skill I rarely have opportunity to use.

Tom is married to someone very cool and they have a very cool five-year-old daughter. I have gotten the distinct impression that he enjoys spending time with his wife and child. He rolled his eyes at me, despite my sound logic. "Are there are any other reasons you'd want a boyfriend?" he asked.

"Of course," I said.

"Like what?"

"Oh," I said, pausing to think, "uh, physical affection. Intellectual companionship--definitely. And emotional intimacy."

"So what matters most?" he asked.

"Well, I guess...I guess the physical affection/ intellectual companionship/ emotional intimacy stuff all kind of tie for first place, but the free cat-sitting runs a close fourth," I said. "I'm not afraid of a little distance."

Apparently the only part of my request the universe paid attention to was the "not afraid of a little distance" part. Not long ago I met someone I really liked, at least for a while. Unfortunately, we lived on opposite sides of the continent. There were other reasons the relationship died an early and ugly death, but the distance didn't help.

And now that I think about it, I remember that although there were things I liked about long-distance relationships, my two previous efforts ultimately failed as well. I have been forced to admit that despite all the ways modern technology makes it possible to stay in touch with someone, it's not the same as being together.

To hell with free cat-sitting. I'll trade it for someone whose face I can actually see when he says "Hello."

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)